Well, on paper this should have worked. Cold War spy movie, set in communist East Germany, 80s aesthetic and soundtrack, martial arts fight scenes, lesbian French woman (A.K.A. A French Woman), John Goodman - consider my nipples hard and my interest piqued. I mean 80s retro is starting to go the way of tamagotchis and Bryan Cranston in terms of cultural fads but maybe they can shoehorn this one in before it goes down like a zeppelin carrying Adele....
... and her backing band. Anyways this looked good, it sounded good, and - as I only found out upon reading the opening credits - it's based on a graphic novel called "Coldest City" by Antony Johnston. Though I'll admit, the only thing of his I've read happens to be an Avatar adaptation of Alan Moore's short Cthulhu Mythos story "The Courtyard"; an excellent piece of work and - as it happens - the single decent Moore CM story I've read. Mainly due to it not containing images of fish men ejaculating.
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Yes this happened. And yes, I realize some of you are aroused right now.
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But I haven't read the comic so I'm unable to comment on it. Though I will say "Coldest City" is a far better title than "Atomic Blonde". The first title gives off a better impression of the depressive and oppressive atmosphere of pre-89 East Berlin. The second says nothing and is probably false advertising since at no point is Charlize Theron dropped on a Japanese city. And it was too bad she wasn't because then we might have gotten her to emote somewhat.
Yes, here Charlize Theron channels her inner Scarlet Johansson; cold, aloof, humorless and generally a chore of slave labour proportions to watch. I'm not sure if this new tendency to make female characters stoic, unrelatable, sociopaths with the personality of a dismembered mall mannequin is a rising trend or not but it needs to die. If I wanted to look at barely human waifs in unconvincing wigs attempting vainly to replicate human speech and emotions then I'd visit a Japanese robotics lab.
Or a Goth club. Look I understand she's playing what is essentially an assassin, and has probably killed many people. But so has Charles Manson and I think we can all agree that he has maintained a colorful personality.
So basically Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, an MI6 field agent tasked with going to East Berlin and retrieving a list containing the names of every clandestine agent in the Soviet Union's employ. Pretty simple, almost to the point of being standard, but hey, I can deal with it. What gets my back up mostly is that almost from the outset it manages to make me hate an 80s soundtrack. For me that's like getting Eli Roth to give a fuck.
This is the problem with doing 80s retro style movies. You either have to go over-the-top ridiculous - a la "Manborg" or "Kung Fury" - or subtle to the point of it almost not mattering - a la "Stranger Things", which I still haven't finished because, despite it's overall quality, each episode drags on longer than Clint Eastwood's nutsack on a nudist beach.
Anywhere in between and you end up with "Atomic Blonde", a movie that tries so hard to be '80s' that it ends up being both anything but and annoyingly so. I love 80s pop, rock and metal but if you forcibly cram it in my ear every few minutes yelling tearfully, "SEE? THIS IS THE 80s!", I leave unconvinced, deaf, and probably a murderer. I'm sorry, I can't get over how overbearing this soundtrack is. It's like the movie is a companion to the OST rather than the OST being a companion to the movie. As for the content of the soundtrack, I can't really complain - it's 80s music. However it does contain a morose, almost Placebo-esque rendition of Nena's "99 Red Balloons"; before hearing which I didn't realize it was possible to sedate one's eardrums, but there you have it.
All this would probably be forgivable if the film was in any way comprehensible. It's paced at the speed of Biggie Smalls' decomposition and makes little to no effort to pull you in with anything other than the aforementioned soundtrack. As a result it's like watching dolls being mashed together by a lobotomized two year old. There's no reason to care about anyone because you don't know what the hell's going on and not one character makes you want to care.
Oh and the villains are shit by the way. Almost none of them display any memorability. (SPOILER ALERT) There's one scene where a bunch of guys line up some punks in an alleyway and interrogate them on the whereabouts of... someone (Shut up! I pay attention!). The main bad guy, who looks pretty much like everyone else, beats one of the them to death with a skateboard (END SPOILER). Now despite how easy to remember that scene was, I honestly couldn't tell you when I saw that guy again. I probably did. I undoubtedly did. But I don't remember at all. Not a single one of them displayed any unique traits or personalities that would have kept me interested. Closest I can think of is the big blonde guy who featured primarily in the best sequence in the film; a sequence involving a "one take" fight scene (another fad which I fear is going to end up being done to death eventually) in which this dude just will not die.
Why is it the best sequence? Well despite the generally decent martial arts choreography, it was the only part of the film I could follow. Again, this film's plot is pretty simple but they managed to make it complicated.
The only other vaguely memorable character I can think of is the aforementioned French lesbian girl who was apparently added in while Theron was "thinking about how do you make this different from other spy movies".
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| I suppose sucking wasn't enough. This film needed to lick as well (Ba dum tish!). |
And realistically she's only memorable due to her death mostly being a result of her immense stupidity.
SPOILER:
(French Lezzer is being strangled. Gun on the bed in front of her. She reaches for it but can't get it.)
ME IN CINEMA: It's on top of the covers, love. Pull the covers towards you and it will bring the gun with them.
FL: (Choking sounds.)
ME: This is not hard. There is a way out of this. Just pull the covers....
FL: (Dies.)
ME:
END SPOILER:
I wanted to like this film but I just couldn't. The scenes and aesthetic seem so uniform that I feel like I'm watching the same scene over and over again. I dread to think what this film's budget for neon lighting was. Can anyone tell me if it was typical of European flats to have the walls lined with rave-standard glow sticks? Those communists. They can't give everyone food but they sure can provide stylish interior lighting. Speaking of communism, they try really hard to align this whole story with the fall of the Berlin Wall (Also known as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Wall - not kidding) by mashing old news footage into your face every now and then as if it thinks you've forgotten where and when the film is set, which - shockingly - doesn't work. When you treat your audience like they have Alzheimer's then do not expect a positive reaction.
Beyond that this movie has a serious case of "music-video-itis." It seriously resembles a music video more often than it does a movie a lot of the time and obviously that's not what I came to see.
So let's see; incomprehensible story, overbearing soundtrack, shit villains, characters that are barely there - this got mostly positive reviews didn't it....?
I've actually seen people compare this movie to the "John Wick" films, to the point even that a crossover has been suggested at some point. But I have to counter this. Whilst I'm not a fan of the first JW movie, I AM a fan of the second; and whilst that movie suffers from a bland lead performance like this one does, it made up for it by almost everything else being fucking awesome. Imaginative action scenes, a plot that's easily followed, memorable bad guys and assassins, and side characters that were actually fun to watch. And as much as I think the first JW film is flawed and overrated, it at least had ideas and a world that I thought would be interesting to see more of.
This, however, didn't pull me in at all. It got to a point where I was just waiting for it to end (which it could have many times, but kept going). A bit like this review.
So in conclusion: watch John Wick Chapter 2. Don't bother with this shit. They got John Goodman and did fuck all with him. That's a sin in and of itself.
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| I saw him kill a movie with a keyboard. A... fucking.... KEYBOARD! |
